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Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) is a research project at the Georgia Tech Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA). Provides actual modules showing how courses that present challenges due to their nature (engineering, mathematics) or inclusion of rich media can be designed to increase accessibility.

This page is actually a brief (but helpful and concise) overview of the use of rubrics. The main reason I am posting it here is because the entire site (Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence) has a wealth of information on design, assessment, student engagement and using technology in the classroom.

This study focuses on the presence of the teacher in the virtual classroom and how the instructor interacts with the students. Can an instructor's behavior encourage more student activity? Certainly, but it has to be more than the occasional "well done," the authors say. Students want more teacher presence, specifically more frequent responses, more acknowledgement of individuals' contribution, and more suggestions and guidance related to a specific response. So the bottom line is try to respond to individual students rather than a group and customize your comments as much as possible. You will have more engaged students.

This article discusses "the importance of structuring activities for balancing electronic communication during e-collaboration (i.e., videoconference, email, chat session, distributed use of group support system) to bridge cultural and stereotypical gaps, to increase profitable role repartition between the participants, and to prevent and solve conflicts." This is especially useful as we work to design our courses for diverse learners

Researchers say that some online students don't like group work. How to deal with dissonance? One idea is to have students list their reasons and then discuss. Another is to show them a video on collaboration and team-building. There are a lot of lousy team-building videos on YouTube. But here's a fun and engaging Ted Talk presentation. Why are kindergarteners better at collaboration than business school students? Tune in.

Following up on Brent's post on Justine Sacco, here is a feature story one of my students wrote last semester on public shaming at Emory. You also can go to her podcast which you might find interesting despite its length and annoying undertone of typing.

If you're like many individuals today, you may be feeling at least a little overwhelmed by the technology confronting you. Or maybe more than a little overwhelmed, making you think: How did I get so far behind? Don't worry, you're not alone.

What's the best way to close the race and gender gap in technology? This article proposes that high school is the place to start.

The Web Literacy Map is a map of competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web.

This is a relatively short (9 pages) piece that's not too difficult to read. I liked that it makes the distinction between 'big OER' (produced by larger, institutionally-based initiatives) and 'little OER' (produced by individuals). A quote: "The first may be that people don't value free things, or are suspicious of free. We have become accustomed to roughly equating monetary price with value or quality. Free is therefore obviously low quality or suspicious at least ... But in education there is still an expectation that high quality education costs." This is something I have thought about often in my career in higher ed here in GA, and that I'm especially attuned to now as I pack 2 children off to another institution of higher education.

Hi Ann, I really liked this article and the differentiation of context. The violin story is a good one that I believe we must ask--at Emory how much dependence upon open source is too much, how do we continue to give the ROI for the tuition? Great find.

This is a article from a colleague of mine on his experience "flipping" his classroom.

That's a pretty good overview of things to keep in mind; hopefully, going through this class will help to understand how to put some of these things into practice! I've followed a number of Coursera courses on topics related to my PhD, and I've been trying to keep an eye on what I liked and disliked about the way each course was run, so I hope to incorporate some of that into any future online teaching I do.